The Gray Zones of Red Zones: Contested Sovereignties and Violence Prevention from Below in Urban El Salvador.

In this paper I analyze how the interplay of gang and state violence shapes efforts to implement violence prevention programs in the poor, gang-controlled "red zone" of La Chacra, in San Salvador, El Salvador. In paying particular attention to the relationships between the community-organizing based violence prevention movement-- the "Prevention Round Table"--and Salvadoran state institutions, I frame a series of dialogic interactions among three different "projects of governance"; one protagonized by state institutions, one by gang networks, and one by ordinary community members involved in self-organized groups such as the Prevention Round Table. While gangs contest the state's sovereignty in its claims to collect rents and regulate life and death, the Prevention Round Table's efforts to reduce violence in all its forms envisions a project of governance that entails a more horizontal relationship with state institutions, and constitutes a mediating force between gangs and state security forces with the potential to illuminate a path toward more peaceful, participatory, and democratic governance in El Salvador. However, my ethnographic interrogation of the Prevention Round Table reveals the complex "gray zones" that trouble both the analytic borders among state, gangs, and community-based organizations, as well as the practical sustainability of the Prevention Round Table's incipient project of governance. Specifically, partisan divisions, internal hierarchies, frequent subordination to gang mandates, and an internalization of the state's right to use deadly force constitute significant obstacles to the Prevention Round Table's objective to strengthen their communities' social fabric. Still, the Prevention Round Table's efforts have reduced the incorporation of local youth into gang structures, and its participants' collective learning processes around internal dynamics and external relations with authoritarian, violent actors provide valuable lessons for efforts for peace with justice throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]